


Glad I Didn't Take The Stairs

by valiantlybold



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Office, Competent People actually being competent, Enemies to Lovers, Getting to Know Each Other, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Office Rivalry, Trapped In Elevator, bonding due to being stuck with each other, smart boysssss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:56:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22035916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valiantlybold/pseuds/valiantlybold
Summary: “Of all the people I could’ve gotten stuck in an elevator with and it just had to be you. Of literallyhundredsof people who work in this building, I had to get stuck withyou.”
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark
Comments: 9
Kudos: 124
Collections: 2019 WinterIron_Holiday_Exchange





	Glad I Didn't Take The Stairs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rainbowshoes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowshoes/gifts).



> short prompt:  
> “Of all the people I could’ve gotten stuck in an elevator with and it just had to be you.” (office-setting petty rivalry type thing)
> 
> Happy holidays and Happy New Year, here's your present! <3

“Of all the people I could’ve gotten stuck in an elevator with and it just had to be you.”

Stark rolled his eyes.

“Of literally _hundreds_ of people who work in this building, I had to get stuck with _you._ _”_

Stark rolled his eyes again, which was getting more and more on Bucky’s nerves every time he did it.

“Will you _please_ stop pacing and _sit down?_ _”_ Stark said. “We don’t know if the ventilation system is still active, so let’s try not to waste oxygen, shall we?”

Bucky sighed. Still… Stark had a point, he hated to admit. They didn’t know how long it would be until someone came to let them out, nor did they, as Stark suggested, know whether the ventilation system was still online or not. He was right. It did them no good to waste precious oxygen.

Bucky looked up at the ceiling. The shaft hatch was distinguishable there.

“I can boost you, then you can pull me up,” Bucky said. “There should be service ladders in the shaft. We should be able to climb all the way to the bottom.”

Stark scoffed. “Don’t you think I know that?” he spit. _“But_ we also don’t know if any of the other elevators are functioning, _or_ when this one might suddenly just turn right back on. We could fall and break our necks. We could get crushed. There’s literally a hundred different ways we could die if we tried to leave this elevator without all the necessary information. Go ahead. Give it a shot. But I’m gonna stay here.”

Bucky groaned, head falling back to thunk against the wall.

This was _the worst._ It was like he told Stark before; of all the hundreds of people in the building, Bucky just _had to_ get on the same elevator as _Tony fuckin’ Stark,_ and the fucking elevator just _had to_ get stuck.

Why couldn't it be _Steve,_ or Natasha, or Sam? _Anyone_ that Bucky at least _got along_ with! Hell, even a perfect _stranger_ would be better than this!

But no, it had to be Stark.

At least he was shutting the hell up for once in his damn life. Honestly, if Stark’s motormouth had been running as usual, Bucky would’ve climbed up the hatch and _jumped,_ just to get away from it. But it wasn’t just the constant chatter that got on Bucky’s nerve! No, there were a hundred other things! The way Stark always had to be _right_ about everything no matter how insignificant it might be, and he always had to be the _smartest_ person in the room, and the wittiest and the funniest and the most likeable!

God, it had been wearing on Bucky’s patience since his first day at the company.

They were both mechanical engineers, who worked in the same department. Bucky was, without tooting his own horn, at least just as smart as Stark was but Stark always had to be _better._ At everything! It was always like that! No matter how hard Bucky tried, no matter how _brilliant_ his work was, Stark had to be even better.

And hell, it wasn’t even just all that. No, Bucky had _tried_ to be nice to Stark. Tried to be friendly with him, be civil and polite and all that bullshit, right from the start. Right from the first day, he’d tried. Every time he did, though, Stark ignored him or blew him off with some stupid, _‘witty’_ comment that chipped at Bucky’s confidence.

In the end, he’d just stopped trying.

So here they were, Stark about as oblivious to the whole world around him as he always was and Bucky as bitter as ever.

“Any signal yet?” Stark asked.

Bucky fished his phone out of his pocket. “Still none. You?”

Stark did the same. “The same.”

“Sure you can’t get the emergency phone to work?”

“No. It’s dead. Who knows? Phone lines might be down.”

“Cameras are still down, too. Guess we’re lucky just to have the lights on.”

Bucky tried to look on the bright side. It was still early in the day; soon, their supervisor would notice that neither of them had clocked in. Then, when neither answered their phone, things would be put in motion. They both had friends in their department. It was likely that someone would volunteer to go by their homes to see if everything was alright. When they realized neither of them were in their homes, the alarm bells would start ringing. Soon enough, they’d realize that both Bucky and Stark went to work, but didn’t get far enough to clock in. That would lead to security doing a sweep of the building, upon which they’d realize one of the elevators was no longer functioning.

The process might take a few hours to roll through, but they’d get there in the end. Bucky trusted the people he worked with, the friends he worked with. It may take a little while, but he had faith that someone would come for them.

And really, if the lights were still on in the elevator, that meant there was power. If the cabin had power, the rest of the building likely had power too. It was a good bet that someone would notice an inoperational elevator sooner rather than later.

Hm, Bucky wanted to double check. He got back up quickly. He undid his tie and rolled up his sleeves, sizing up the service hatch while he did.

“C’mon, get up,” he told Stark.

The other man frowned. “Already told you, I’m staying here.”

Bucky sighed, but briefly explained his thought process. Stark shuffled to his feet at the end of it, so Bucky assumed he was in agreement.

“Okay, I’ll boost you up,” Bucky said. “Just get as good of a look around as you can.”

“Got it,” Stark said, following Bucky’s lead and removing his own tie.

Bucky widened his stance and clasped his hands together to form a stepping stone for the other man. Stark took hold of Bucky’s shoulders and placed his right foot in his hands.

“Three, two, one!” Stark counted down quickly.

On one, Stark pushed off from the floor, extending his right leg to stand up straight. Bucky followed the motion, lifting as Stark pushed. There came a god-awful clatter and bang of the hatch being forced open, Stark steadying himself by grabbing onto Bucky’s head. Given the situation and their precarious position, Bucky decided to be the bigger person and not complain about it.

“There’s power!” Stark said, peering into the elevator shaft through the crack he’d managed to open. “The service lamps are on! Looks like were stuck between floors. Can’t see very well, but I think the emergency brakes might be engaged.”

“Wait, shouldn’t that send an automatic distress call, or somethin’?” Bucky said, doing his best to balance with Stark’s weight.

“It should, but they’re probably malfunctioning,” Stark suggested.

“See anything else?”

“No. Kinda dark, even with those lights on. Can’t see any of the other elevators either.”

“Okay. Easin’ you down now, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The hatch scraped and clattered again as Stark let it fall closed. A moment later, Bucky lowered him enough to allow him to simply step out of his hands.

“Guess that means were back to square one, though,” Bucky admitted. “Just having to wait for someone to come for us.”

Stark shrugged, sitting down on the floor again. “We know the emergency brakes are on. At least we won’t plummet helplessly to our death trapped in a box.”

At that, Bucky honestly had to snort. Gallows humor was his kind of humor, he supposed.

“Gotta give ya that, I guess.”

“And if the building has power, it’s very likely the ventilation system is still operational, so we probably won’t suffocate to death either.”

Bucky let out a tired chuckle. “Another point well made.”

“All in all? I guess it could be worse.”

“That’s awful optimistic.”

“I tend to be a _glass half-full_ kinda person.”

Bucky chuckled again. He sat back down opposite from Stark, letting his head thunk back against the wall. He pulled out his phone to check for a signal again. A sigh left him when he saw there was still no reception. No Wi-Fi either. The damn elevator could just as well have been a fucking Faraday cage for all the signal he was getting.

He flipped the phone from hand to hand to pass the time.

“If this phone was a walkie-talkie,” he said, thinking out loud. “-we could’a just radioed to security and been _done_ with all this.”

Stark hummed. “If only.”

“Older phones used to have that, right?” Bucky wondered. “That _press to talk_ radio bullshit?”

Stark frowned, thinking for a moment. “Yeah, I think they might’ve,” he said but shrugged. “Never heard of anyone ever usin’ it, though.”

Bucky scoffed. “Me either. Used to have this huge old radio, though,” he said, showing the general size with his hands. “A walkie-talkie, but one’a those big black fuckers they’ve always got in movies?”

“Yeah, think I know what you’re talkin’ about,” Stark agreed. “Why’d you have that for?”

Bucky shrugged, passing his phone back and forth with himself again. “Me and Steve. Our houses were right next to each other in Brooklyn. Been best friends since diapers. Dad gave me the radios for my tenth birthday, so I gave one to Steve. We’d stay up all night talking about...whatever the hell it is _ten-year-old’s_ talk about,” he said with a chuckle.

When he looked at Stark, the man had an almost wistful look in his eyes. Longing.

“Sounds nice. Wish I’d had a friend like that, growin’ up,” he admitted. “Got Rhodey, of course. And I love him. But...it’s not the same. Y’know? My first friend and I didn’t meet him until we started at MIT.”

He sounded more sad than Bucky had ever heard him before. It made him seem _human,_ for once. Usually, he was just _so perfect,_ but now…he was showing himself as he was; imperfect, sad, filled with a quiet longing.

“I-…” Bucky began as if hoping to comfort, but stopped himself, a crystal clear thought pinging through his head. _“Wait.”_

The other man let out a sigh. “What?” he said, his tone sounding like he was expecting to be mocked.

“I think I just had an idea.”

Stark looked up. The interest and plea for distraction was clear in his eyes. “Well, _go on!_ Share with the class!”

“Steve always has a radio on his desk in our office!” Bucky explained. “Like, an actual _tune-in-to-radio-stations-for-music_ radio!”

“Okay?” Stark said, brows furrowed.

“So if, _somehow,_ we could break out on a the FM band, we could zero in on his usual frequency and send him a message!”

Stark was on his feet in a flash, his brain beginning to pick up steam as the idea rolled around in there. “Oh, that’s _good,_ I like that, that’s very good!”

Bucky got to his feet too. “But how?”

_“Push to talk!”_

“Yeah?”

“If we can somehow modify a cellphones internal transmitter antenna to cut in on the FM band instead, it'd be like a walkie-talkie! He wouldn't be able to answer without his own transmitter, no, but at least he might be able to hear us!”

“Well, it’s better than sittin’ around on our asses waiting to be saved! But how do we do it?”

“Lemme see your phone. No, we'll have to use mine. Better antenna on this model. Open the emergency phone panel and pull of the hand-held and disconnect the wires from the circuits. That’ll be the microphone and speaker, while my phones the transmitter.”

“Oh, if we open the hatch and attach the phone to the steel cables, the whole elevator could be an amplifier!”

“Yes, that’s brilliant!”

*

What felt like a whole _eternity_ later, they had a mangled cellphone that would _hopefully_ function as they hoped it would.

“Winter Soldier to Captain America,” Bucky spoke into the phone. “Winter Soldier to Captain America, this is Winter Soldier, I hope you read me, Captain.”

*

Steve look up when the small radio on his desk started crackling. Hm, why did it do that? The signal was supposed to be pretty strong here, _and_ he’d managed to find the _perfect_ position for the antenna. It hadn’t crackled like that since he got it set up just right.

“-er Sol-…-tain Amer-” a voice said, cutting in and out, static buzzing. “This is-…Soldier-…read me, Cap-”

Wait… This didn’t sound like a radio station. Was someone cutting in on his band with a ham radio, or something?

He turned up the volume.

*

“This is Winter Soldier,” Bucky said again. “Steve, it’s me! It’s Bucky! I really, really, _really_ hope you can hear me, man.”

Tony fiddled with their make-shift antenna, trying to catch the signal. He kept one eye on the other phone, which they had rigged up to scan the band, allowing them to track the signal they wanted.

*

“-eve, it’s m-…-ucky! I rea-…-hope you can hear me, man.”

The voice was getting more and more clear.

“Please just hear me this one goddamn time, Steve, ya punk!”

Steve’s jaw dropped.

_Bucky?!_

“I’m in one of the elevators in the building, with Tony Stark. Y’know, the guy from our department? It seems like the emergency breaks malfunctioned and stopped the cabin, and the emergency phone isn’t working for some reason! _Please!_ If you can hear me, just come get us, punk! Been stuck in here since this mornin’, man!”

Steve could _not_ believe what he was hearing.

He grabbed his radio and shot out of his seat. People were calling after him as he ran out of their department. _Where the fuck was the security office again?!_

*

“This is Tony Stark, taking over for Bucky Barnes. If someone can hear me, we are trapped in an elevator, please alert security staff in the office building on the following address-”

They both looked up when there was a sudden banging on the doors.

 _“Holy fuck, it actually worked!”_ Bucky exclaimed.

They both dropped their cobbled together devices, to hurry to the door. They started banging on the metal in the hopes that whoever was outside would hear them.

“We’re in here!” Bucky shouted.

“Is someone out there?!” Tony yelled.

They went quiet in unison, both holding their breaths as they waited for an answer.

_“Bucky! Tony! It’s Steve! I’m here with security and the maintenance crew! They’re gonna pry open the doors, so just hold on for a lil’ longer, okay?!”_

“Thank fucking Christ you’re heard us, Steve!” Bucky continued. “We’re fuckin’ losin’ our minds in here!”

_“It’ll be over soon, Buck! Just get back from the doors and they’ll get to work on pryin’ ‘em open!”_

“Got it!” Tony said. “We’re gettin’ back!”

They stepped away from the doors again.

In just a moment, there was more banging and knocking on the doors, metal scraping and screeching. They were both about to fucking _explode_ with relief when they could see a crack being made between the doors.

A crowbar was wiggled into the opening; there came noises of effort, followed by another screech. The gap widened.

They were grabbing blindly onto each other, the relief overwhelming them both.

Soon enough, several sets of hands became visible, grabbing onto either door and forcing them apart.

 _“C’mon! Let’s go!”_ one of the maintenance men said. “Can’t hold this damn thing forever!”

Bucky gave Tony a push. _“Go!_ I’m right behind you!”

They were stuck halfway to the floor, half the door opening to the concrete wall of the shaft instead. With Bucky’s help and the help of a security person, Tony could climb out. Bucky followed as quickly as he could. He did _not_ want to be stuck in an elevator all alone; not even for the short time it would take them to pry the doors again.

The doors fells closed behind Bucky as he crawled away.

Someone grabbed him by his arms, pulling him up off the floor to his feet. Steve on his left, and Tony clung to his left.

“Fucking _Christ,_ Bucky!” Steve began to berate, and oh, Lord, Bucky really should’ve known to prepare for this scolding of a lifetime. “Do you _know_ how worried I was when you didn’t come into work and you didn’t answer your damn phone?! I thought you were dead in a ditch somewhere, for Christ’s sake! And _you,_ Tony! Can you _imagine_ how crazy Pepper and Rhodey were going upstairs?! Pepper could barely work, she was on the verge of tears! And Rhodey! Rhodey was wearing the floor down with his pacing!”

But honestly, Bucky didn’t mind the berating all that much, and it didn’t look like Tony minded either. At least it meant that Steve, and everyone else, had been concerned for them. Worried for their safety. So yeah, Bucky stand being mother-henned by Steve for a while.

Thankfully, they were rescued from Steve’s lectures by someone from security and someone from the maintenance crew, who pulled both Bucky and Tony aside. They were allowed to sit down, and were then questioned in detail about events. Steve appeared with coffee at one point, so the mother-hen thing wasn’t _all_ bad.

Everything went by very quickly, once they actually left the elevator. After the monotony of several hours in a very small metal box, all this _stuff_ seemed to happen all at once. _Which_ meant it was all the more of a relief when Steve told them the boss had deigned to give them the rest of the day off to _recover._

Steve walked them both out of the building (after lending his phone to Tony so he could get yelled at by Pepper and Rhodey as well) and gave them both a tight hug as a goodbye.

And well, then they were just sort of standing on the curb with no real idea of what to do now.

Bucky pulled out his pack of cigarettes and lit one. Thank God, he’d been on the verge of insanity, having been unable to smoke for so long. He offered one to Tony, but he declined politely.

“I’m starving,” Tony said instead. “I overslept so I didn’t have breakfast. I was just gonna get somethin’ from the vending machines upstairs, but that kinda went out the door, I guess.”

In agreement, Bucky’s stomach grumbled. “I could eat. Ever been to Angie’s Diner? Just up the block.”

Tony shook his head. “No, never heard of it.”

Bucky smiled. “Well, lemme tell ya, they got the best pancakes around.”

The other man hummed, grinning. “Buy me a stack and I’ll be the judge of that.”

That actually didn’t sound like a terrible suggestion.


End file.
